


Fate-Touched and Free

by estel_of_the_eyrie



Series: Assassin's Creed [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Historical nods, Original Frye kids, Slight RothFrye at the beginning, The Angel of Mons, The Old Guard AU, World War One, actsquad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26056366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_of_the_eyrie/pseuds/estel_of_the_eyrie
Summary: There's a tale throughout history of the Assassin's who just can't seem todie. Some are born in the aftermath of fire, others on the battlefield. London has her own army ofmemorable oneskeeping her safe."The Old Guard" AU based in Assassin's Creed: Syndicate.
Relationships: Evie Frye/Henry Green | Jayadeep Mir
Series: Assassin's Creed [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/379042
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Fate-Touched and Free

Jacob wakes amidst fire and flame. His head aches, his arms scald. The blood running through his veins as if it is boiling beneath the surface.

For a while, he forgets where he is. For a time, this is just another test, one he wishes to ignore and simply go back to sleep. They _always_ go away when he sleeps and reawakens.

Then he coughs, and coughs again. There is a phantom grip around his throat that just won’t let go. A pounding that crackles in his ears and consumes everthing around him. Is that _ash_ he can taste? That shrouds him as he lies imobile?

He opens his eyes to calamity.

His beloved coat in _ruins_ , scorched and torn asunder. All of his clothes reek of his surroundings, and speaking is _out_ of the question.

Jacob lies on his back, staring upwards to embers and a starry sky. Confused.

Why is he on the floor? Why is there _fire_?! Why? Why? Wh-

He turns to his left, to see a husk of something that was once human. A manic grin still remained there, and the husk was nauseating to look at. A man he had once trusted. A man he might have said he loved once.

Roth’s corpse lay there. The remnants of the man who strangled him and left him to _burn_.

…

So why _didn’t he_?

*

The aching doesn’t leave just because he gets going; the entire walk back through silent streets, the younger twin is swearing and cursing. Once he had to pause and regain his breath. Coughing, he finds its mucus sooty and coarse. Miners and chimney sweeps alike could sympathise with that.

The train is remarkably waiting for him at Euston when he arrives. That can either be wonderful or ghastly, depending on the mood of those who lie inside.

He sighs, and catches his breath for a moment. His scarred lungs and throat will be feeling the consequences for a few hours longer; smoke envolopes, and even if has cleared the effects linger.

~~Kind of like the brutality of Roth’s ghostly fingers around his neck.~~

He had no mood for yet another fight. For the rumoured unity of twins, their time in London had undoutedly strained whatever familial relationship they once had.

Evie is unsettled as he heads inside. She’s prowling, a ferral fury behind normally gleaming eyes.

*

The fight happens, worse than ever. Two fraying tempers (somehing Cecily was _infamous_ for, according to George Westhouse) sent papers flying, coarse throats once _again_ screaming to the heavens. Henry had to intervene before punches were thrown amongst the disarray.

It takes him time, in that long walk in the bitter chill, to realise what that Evie was just as pale and settled as she had only seen once before.

*

Both twins significant damage during the conflict. Having their eternity sapped and used as fuel for their adversary to use against them.

They felt each bullet as it healed, every broken bone and disolcation being reset.

During one particularly brutal recovery, Starrick had that upper hand; he held them, using that regeneration to bring them to the edge of death again _and again_. Use that energy, that he was so jealous of and wanted all for himself to grow above them.

Starrick wanted to live forever, to give Templars an unending reach across the capital and the Empire, but all he was given was a corpse left to gather dust.

Vision white, another unknowning weakeness and suddenly the pair were on the floor. A kukuri stuck overhead and landed sank into Crawford’s shoulder. Tension broke, the pair were snapped back to themselves just in time to see their friend and mentor figure thrown across the room.

Crawford Starrick dies before the minute is out. 

Henry lies motionless, neck at an awkward angle as he is sprawled across the stones. There is blood; it halos and stains those white Indian Silk robes.

Evie ripped her eyes from the sight to look at her brother. Simialrly covered in blood and weakened after a long night and a subsequent long day, he was distraught. Scarred hands clenched the Shroud, ripped away from Crawford’s cooling corpse behind them.

Evie felt as if her world was shattering before her. In the space of 24 hours she had nearly lost her brother, and was she now about to lose him too?

Her feet moved as if another person entirely. She found herself cradling the man’s head, the first time with percevable disregard and panic – this had definitely uneased her more than anything he has ever done.

Loose bones heal under her fingertips. It’s that familiar yet awfully macarbe sensation that stops her spiral.

“What?” he seemed bewildered for a moment, seemingly forgetting where he was and what he was doing. “Did I compromise the mission?”

A _sob_. Evie let all walls of the old world crumble, flinging herself into his eternal arms and kissing him strong. Moments later, Jacob sits with them, huffing.

“Some fucking day, huh?”

*

Henry had known back in 1863, when he was marked for death by his own Father. Ethan Frye, that man who is claimed for saving him from execution and taking him to a new life on the British shores, **_lied_**.

He did not manage to save The Ghost; when the time came to it, he was just too late. Henry had taken the execution as a young man must. There was no escaping that fate, at least at first.

It was a few hours later when he awoke; any bruises from his necklace of rope had already healed, as had the bullet wounds from their second attempts. It was too dangerous for him to stay in his homeland. Too dangerous to thrive.

Ethan had given him a chance to help, ferrying younger Jayadeep to London, and there an undying spectral being became protector over those unfortunate enough to rest in tunnels of its underworld. More than once he died in the defense of the defenseless.

*

Days later, once it had all calmed down and the divide between the insepperable twins began to repair, Evie sat him down to explain everything.

She had _felt_ what happened at the Alhambra. How, she could not tell him, but she knew the moment he suffocated. Then the time he burned.

Then he thinks, and he blanches before holding his twin close and refusing to let go for _hours_.

It had been the same sensation he had felt all those weeks ago back in Crawley at their Bloodings.

The sensation of phantom choking and breaking ribs. The cracking skull.

Evie’s first death had happened in the months prior to that day. While escaping the labyrinth-like tunnels within Sir David Brewster’s laboratory, hounded by the imploding Apple of Eden that had grown tired of experimentation behind her.

Lighting lapped at her heels, cutting of exits, and causing her to abandon plan after plan. To think on their feet was more of Jacob’s game, although she could defy her reliance on plans when the situation called for it.

A moment’s hesitation caused a tidal wave.

Shocks grew too close to her head. A small trip on the grating. Being unable to reach the next jump meaning a pause to crawl.

The roof caved in completely. First her leg was trapped; Evie knew it was broken by the _SNAP_ that came with it. She’d say she didn’t panic, but the lack of give beneath the shrapnel, the bleeding nose from headbutting the floor, and the fact _none of this would be happening she had just planned better_ got to her.

Evie remembers calling out for her brother. And then waking up sore and aching and wondering _what the devil happened_.

Short of breath, she _somehow_ managed to find her way back to the train tracks. Jacob waited for _hours_ , and with a joke over what took her so long, they flew to London. In the quiet train as stowaways, Evie found a free hand reaching to the base of her neck, still waiting to feel cracks there. 

*

There was a rumour that many of their calibre, the _memorable ones_ were forged and decided when surrounded by life and death. The twins were born with the death of their mother, so rumours surrounded them and would continue to surround them. Mentor Altair had been the same, although he was lucky to be given that decision to just _stop_.

Some had said that was foolish of him, as he such an opportunity to do further good. But then of course, they were not one of the lucky few who could return again and again. To learn from their life-shortening mistakes.

The _memorable ones_ ’ legend began as a military caution. They would come back again and _again_ after falling on the battlefields so often their deeds preceded them. Used as a warning for their foes. Ethan would get correspondence from a woman so old she knew _Pericles_.

Jacob likes to think that he can do some good with what he has. The ability to become _memorable_ would mean a lot come ten, fifty, a hundred years from now.

*

Jack knows that his mentor cannot die. Jacob wishes that he _could_.

Maybe then he can face the punishment he truly deserves, and not being scalded and tortured by a monster half his age in a dank cell, forgotten beath the world.

His eye never healed, not fully. Their bloodline can heal injuries, not torture and missing organs. The skin was swollen over where the eye used to sit; its blood and gore was _still_ littered in his hair, an expensive reminder of just what he could do if pushed. A tooth then follows, and then a threat to cut his tongue.

*

When Evie’s face, and _Freddie with her_ come into view, peering out of the darkness, he lets himself relax. So much energy is taken just to hold his head upright he cannot speak. He hopes the lone tear says enough.

For weeks he has lived through what their kind dread the most.

A sob cuts through his sandpaper throat, and he lets his twin envelop him in a long-awaited reunion. It’s the warmest he has been since … since he cannot remember. Jack never got close enough for the elder man to feel enough terminating body heat to make him feel even remotely human. 

And he was practically a ghost in the first place with how cold he was, even in the summer.

This contact was dizzying.

He heard a heartbroken, apologetic and _crying_ Evie whisper “Happy Birthday” before he goes under.

*

Emmett’s daughters, Lydia and Alexandra, are twins because _of course they bloody are._

And they both appear to hold that unique connection that neither Evie or Jacob could explain to them. A dauntless force, the _redux_ form of the Unstoppable Frye Twins, cuasing havoc in London and saving the world.

Sometime after their twenty-first birthdays, they realise what’s so special about their grandfather and great-aunt. Why the duo are suddenly younger in appearance than them.

It takes a catastrophy to do it.

1914, and the world is at war. A catastrophic war, where the Brotherhood knows _thousands upon thousands_ will die before it is over.

Alexandra was over in France, Mons if Evie remembered correctly from the letter fraying in her nephew’s hands.And under attack;one of the first British engagements during the war that would take over four years to come to a close.

Protecting the men as they retreated to safety, her cover was compromised once or twice. But it did more good than ill for the men; while anonymous, and later claimed a ‘hoax’ _The Angel of Mons_ would become an infamous story to come out from the trenches and the muddy battlefields of the Western Front.

(It was classes a hoax to save the brotherhood. That happens far more throughout history than they would admit. Even Jack now lies forgotten somewhere at the bottom of a mass grave.)

A stray bullet from an opponent, merely fixing their machine gun caught her. She collapsed, hidden in the woods, alone; and slowly, Alexandra choked on her own blood beneath the trees, three bullets in her lung sealing her fate.

But she woke up. Hours later, in that same copse of trees, she found herself returning to her sister and her family.

Lydia’s own would come during a zeplin raid in London two years later. They were in the Kenway Mansion – now turned into the Assassin Bureau of the city, with a small scattering of appartments on the top floor. They had been so busy, dealing with letter after letter and telegrams from all corners of conflict that none of them heard the whistling bomb that killed them until Lydia was coughing and being prised from the rubble by her catatonic twin.

*

The cycle continued. _They continued._

Some of the worst elements of humanity were to come, but they would weather it as they had always done.

Several elders stopped. Whether their immortality decided it was time, or that they could choose to reliquish their gift, nobody could say. But those from the Old Kingdom of Egypt, or the Crusades, or even _older_ could not keep up with a modern world that made hiding impossible.

Evie and Lydia were known as key British Suffragettes, so it made hiding all the more troublesome, and Jacob became a famous rights activist. Working in the dark gradually become that much more difficult the longer they continued.

But with each that passed on their timeless odyssey, came another to take their place.

Shakespeare had said that a person’s life had seven acts; he never said just how long each would take.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you enjoyed this little piece! This was brought on by a plot bunny I had (and I don't know what brought it on, I think it was the ACTumblr Discord chat about AUs?) and I finished 90% of this in one go! I found it really fun to write, and I want to do some more AU-central pieces in the future. 
> 
> So if you have some AUs that you think would be fun to cover, let me know!
> 
> Obviously, only Evie, Jacob, Ethan, Lydia and Henry are canonically named characters; Emmett (Jacob's son) is a fanon name that is quite popular, and it's been a personal headcanon for me is that Lydia was also a twin. I thought it made an interesting dynamic.
> 
> (Side note - who else would _adore_ a Lydia Frye game?! The Angel of Mons piece with Alexandra was inspired by a piece I thought would go well in the setting and still maintaining the "Hide in Plain Sight" part of the Creed.)
> 
> I've also been doing a lot of catching up on shows - and Critical Role is also one that sticks out. The "Fate Touched" in the title? Yeah, that's Vax'ildan-inspired. And then "Free" is the origins and meaning for the surname "Frye".


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